Onna (1948)

Onna: Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. With Mitsuko Mito, Eitarô Ozawa. A dark secret awaits a dance-hall girl when she goes to meet her former lover.

“Mitsuko Mito goes to meet her old boy friend, Eitarô Ozawa. He says he is done with crime, and they should run away together to a distant town, where he has a business opportunity. As they begin their journey together, she sees a newspaper story about a robbery. One man got away, but he was limping. Ozawa is limping…u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s a long journey for the two of them. Miss Mito still has feelings for him, but is he telling her the truth about his wanting to change, or is he just being manipulative? Is the truth somewhere in the middle?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAlthough the copy I looked at was 67 minutes in length, the IMDb indicates that seventeen minutes were cut. that makes the parts that remain harder to judge. Is the grand sexual imagery — boats entering inlets, trucks entering tunnels, always followed by a change in attitude significant? Itu0026#39;s hard to tell from the score of movies from director Keisuke Kinoshita what this means. He did other womenu0026#39;s movies, but this one seems atypical.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt is essentially a two-person show, with both actors nearer the beginning of their careers. Miss Mito entered the movies in 1935 when she was 16. By the time she retired in 1973, she had played in 97 movies, for a great variety of directors, from Shimizu to Inagaki (the SAMURAI trilogy) to Yamamoto. She died in 1981. Ozawau0026#39;s career began later in his life. He began his career in 1935 at the age of 26. His more than 200 movie roles through almost the end of his life in 1988 included nine with Kinoshita directing.”